Acknowledgement
In composing this article I would like to appreciate the contributions of Mr. Miftah Sermolo, the Manager of Bishoftu Computer and Electronics Trading, for his assistance in the provision of computer and internet facilities.
27 December 2012
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Full Name: Hibamo Ayalew Basha
Born: 12 February 1990
Graduated: in Political Science and International Relations in 2012
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Reflections on the 2012 Apocalyptic View of the World
In Astronomy Calendar of Celestial Events found on the Facebook Page Atheism & World Peace, 21 December 2012 represents, December Solstice,
“The December Solstice occurs at 11:12 UTC. The South Pole of the earth will be tilted toward the Sun, which will have reached its southernmost position in the sky and will be directly over the Tropic of Capricorn at 23.44 degrees south latitude. This is the first day of winter (winter solstice) in the northern hemisphere and the first day of summer (summer solstice) in the southern hemisphere.”
Do you see any sign of the “End of the World” in this statement at all? Definitely not! Is this what is all about Apocalypse? Nonsensical!
Since the days of the enlightenment of the first intellectual man of the caves, freed from his instinctual and emotional bondages, being transformed into a better and higher being every time onwards, there were dreamers of all kinds, from laymen to those who consider themselves to self-appointed or prophets ‘hired’ by their ‘creators’ to prognosticate about the future situation of the human race, relying on the mythical explanations of the involvement of an ‘invisible hand’ or psychoanalytic approaches as an evidence, to recruit disciples from the head to the toe (from naïve followers to ‘visionary’ leaders, not necessarily politicians). But the reality behind the curtains to those scenarios of illusion of the dreamers’ forecasting role points towards another signpost: all dreamers are not real dreamers, all prophets are not true prophets…there are nightmarish dreamers, and gloomy and pessimistic prophets among those groups of people.
Apart from these occurrences, various religious leaders/spiritualists and moral philosophers have mostly been the dominant figures among their ignorant apostles for nothing. Relying on stories of creation within the religious scriptures of their respective religions, religious spiritualists were delving the mass into a non-existent chamber that is full of chaos, anarchy, a hypothetical chamber for punishing the ‘sinful’ human being and for ending his life of an outlaw, independent, conscious, virtuous, creative, self-reliant…being.
On the other hand, the philosophers were relying on their written and unwritten codes of moral behavior, to tell their followers, adherents, the idea that man will be destroyed/annihilated for his ‘corrupt’ tendencies, especially in individual-society interactions and religious apostasies and heresies. In both cases, there were many kinds of followers, apostles, disciples, adherents, leaders, masters,…both working towards the ‘realization’ of their mythically formulated illusive and self-degrading scriptures of ‘punishment’ from no one and nowhere. Despite these, the main aim of this essay is not to degrade the value of dreams, prophesies, predictions, forecasts, prognostications have had in human history for eons, rather it is mainly about informing each and every individual to be aware of what he/she is up to in following and bearing in his/her mind the right and duty to understand the essence of his/her very existence, from inside-out than creating and ignorantly being an acolyte of myths that have not considerable philosophical value, myths that have the power to overcome their own very founding fathers and followers for worse, myths that have a long-lasting and profound tendency to produce zombie off-springs that are retaining an oblivion, desperate, ‘sinful’, insane, freak identity of any kind. In such a way, it aims at pinpointing the very idea that life is not always full of vices, destructive forces, yangs, evil-doers, with gloomy future, a dead race of human beings; if seen properly and from an optimistic, subjective, inspired, aspiring, thriving, and subjective perspective, life has its prosperities, gifts, offerings, blessings, inspirations, essences, joys, pleasures, ecstasies, thrills, surprises, awesome, yummies…etc that are awaiting to be enjoyed, harnessed, used, consumed, first of all by restructuring the way we visualize, imagine, dream, prophesize and aspire in favor of favorable outcomes and desired results that we want to attain. Yet for some people this seems an extraordinarily impossible discovery; but it is a possible one if we are ready to change. There are only few areas where human beings have explicitly failed to realize their visions hitherto, though there are still untapped zones of uncertainty and curiosity; and most of those areas of innovation are materials for everyday survival and needs, they need to go beyond that horizon to cut across ideas as there were in the ancient civilizations. On the Ideal Plane, men are capable of creating illusions or realities within or beyond their power of comprehension, if they are voluntarily to harness the fruitfulness of their curiosity, strivings, thriving, apotheosis, to its fullest capacity, subjectively and for one’s own benefit and meaningful transcending existence, in time, space and conditions.
Now to clarify what I am to say in the next, forthcoming paragraphs I thought it would be better to elaborate some concepts of interest-especially, dreams and followership.
Before two millennia, Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, a Roman who flourished during the early fifth century, in his Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis ("Commentary on the Dream of Scipio") (Wikipedia), had attempted to talk about dreams in an attractive manner. In this commentary, one of the major things he had tried to give attention was, the classification of dreams into five major types:
1.Enigmatic Dream, in Greek oneiros, in Latin somnium;
2.Prophetic vision, in Greek horama, in Latin visio;
3.Oracular dream, in Greek chrematismas, in Latin oraculum;
4.Nightmare, in Greek enypnion, in Latin insomnium and
5.Apparition, in Greek phantasma, which Cicero, when he has occasion to use the word, calls caus visum.
Cicero explained that, “the last two, the Nightmare and the Apparition, are not worth interpreting since they have no prophetic significance.” He emphasized,
“Nightmares may be caused by mental or physical distress, or anxiety about the future: the [‘patient’] experiences in dreams vexations similar to those that disturb him during the day.”
In this context of Cicero, what we can clearly understand is that, a person who is frequently told the common adage, “the day may be over…but the night [the end of the world] is just beginning [showing its preliminary signs of the destruction of human, a metaphorical approach to the apocalypse]” will in the next few seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years, decades,…based on his/her personal level of understanding of human behavior, his moral judgment, his visions about the future, the religion he follows, the type of political culture and system he/she is governed by, his/her extent of curiosity, psychological maturity, emotional sophistication…etc, be the next victim of this illusive, dark age, pessimistic, ‘home-made’ psychological weapon of intimidation sooner or later, if he/she is departed from realistic understanding of the mundane and ultra mundane life he/she is leading or following; plus to this, the extent to which these individuals or the society try to find whether the belief that is in the air they are breathing has visible, real premises and logical courses of thought and action and conclusions by itself has a tremendous amount of influence on the choices each make.
For human are animals led by their ideological or idiosyncratic inclinations, the contribution of such mythical, illogical, psychologically disturbing stories of self-destruction through visions alone should not be ignored to the detriment of comparing lies and truths plainly regardless of the bearings they have on human behavior privately and especially, collectively. When an individual or a society is hypochondriac, always has unhealthy skepticism about the occurrence of good things in the future, the desired results will explicitly and definitely turn out to be destructive and harmful than constructive and beneficial. And if the level of consciousness by itself is not raised by any means and enhanced by subjective standards, those people who merely emphasize and preach the gospels of appearances and results than the logical course of formation and demolition of a matter, will start to lead a life of ill-effect ridden analogy, an analogy created between their desperate lives and the standards of measuring the levels of their rightness, meekness, generosity, compassion…[many believe the standards come from cosmic forces] mentioned in their respective scripture of proscriptions and prescriptions, emphasizing proscriptions. The outcome will be catastrophic for this unconscious, emotional drive towards self-destruction without furnishing evidences of occurrence and certainty of happening will leave its marks on the forthcoming race of mankind: psychologically, socially, politically, philosophically, scientifically, technologically, economically, mentally, physically…etc. dreams and imaginations will also lose their advantage in favor of ideas parading the uselessness of thinking and thought, which will subsequently be accompanied by a throng that perishes without vision, a vision that could have told him/her that “there is always light behind the clouds” and above for nothing clearly noble.
The second point of interest in explaining this convergence of illusions is to be found in the words of Prometheus; in Greek legend, he is one the sons of Zeus after the great Deucalion’s Flood, who rebels against his father for good, for the betterment and enlightenment of the human race:
“Happy as beasts are happy. Of what use to make a separate race called man and endow him with little fur, some wit, a curious charm of unpredictability? If he must live like this, why separate him from the beasts at all?”
True that man is not just an animal, but he is a super animal. He has other qualities that made him unique from the rest of his fellow animals: he can dream, he can imagine, has awareness of space, aspires for the future, invents, discovers, destroys, preserves, annihilates at a larger scale…a quality that is non-existent in the beasts outside mankind’s sphere of concern, hence the secret behind his anthropogenic mastership over nature. Have you ever seen a lion that can forecast the possible decline in the number of his preys in the next 5 years? That is impossible for a lion that is only accustomed to snatch and eat; it had no such kind of aptitude. In contrast, man has had a control over all other creatures, whether tiny or giant, on this planet due to the powers, abilities and skills he possessed and utilized, even to the point of striving to achieve the position of being the “master of the universe”, though not yet materialized but had its impacts on the way he thinks about what he is capable of doing, his potential and what he is up to. If mankind is to be a senseless beast with a submissive, docile, passive nature, which in Zeus’s words had only “…the capacity of worship. An aptitude for admiring [the power of non-existent entities], being puzzled by riddles and amazed by [the] caprice [of his supposed idols]” then the reason for his existence will definitely lose its essence and flavor and this happened many times for the last 10, 000 years of modern man’s evolution, history has them in his bowel. That is why there arose a disagreement between Zeus and Prometheus, father and son, because Zeus had said once, “That was why [man] was made [to be conditioned by his low definition illusions of caprice and omnipotence, omnipresence of his ‘appointed protectors from unidentified location].”
The third way of explaining what I am trying to state here is derived from a novel by an Ethiopian author, Yismake Worku, known by its title “Ramatohara” published in 2010. In this book you will find a big tree, like an oak tree (as I have imagined it to be), with a broad and wide shade, broad base, massive roots and branches. But the tree has another menace; it can kill humans or other animals if they are touched by its shade. For many humans and animals have died, especial focus on humans, of this tree many people are now beginning to discuss about the manners of cutting down and destroying the tree i.e., ‘destroying it before it destroys/kills everyone in nick of time’, they thought. But no one, except one man, a wise man, Kifle Yohannes, has tried his very best to understand the traits of the tree and the reason why it should be uprooted, for the mere reason that it killed people and animals, which go near it. But still the majority has come to a consensus that the tree had to be destroyed; implicitly no one had paid attention to what is to become of the seeds that are to spread from this ominous tree and grow somewhere else, where it will have its new victims, if there had been the possibility of cutting it. This was decisive if they are to be wise enough to get rid of the tree and spare their lives. To do this they are on a meeting, to discuss with the king, King Fasil and the wise man, Kifle Yohannes was there. The author describes the scene in the following manner:
"ይህን ቀሳፊ ዛፍ ለማየት መላ ጎንደሬ ነቅሎ ወጣ፡፡"
Roughly translated as “To see this killer tree every man- Gondares, have come from all around the kingdom.” That is to say, they have gathered in one place to pass decisions on the tree after their discussion sessions with the king. The wise man, Kifle Yohannes was one of them. Everyone who spoke before him has tried his best in trying to magnify the notoriety, the evil nature of the tree and the need to destroy: it is killing humans. But he didn’t think they way they thought. When he was given the opportunity to speak, in this case to suggest his wise ideas as requested by the king, he had said the following in contradiction to the mass, the majority, in favor of cutting and there was another guy who supported investigation of the tree before cutting it down:
“አሁን ስለዚህ ዛፍ ከናንተ መካከል የሚያውቅ የለም፡፡ እውቀታችሁ ጥላው መግደሉን ማወቃችሁ ብቻ ነው፡፡ ማን እንደተከለው፣ ለምን እንደተከለው፣ ለማን እንደተከለው፣ ፍሬው የምን እንደሆነ፣ ለምን እንደሚገል ሁሉ አታውቁም፡፡'ይቀረጥ' የሚሉት አፎች ብዙ ሆነው ሲከፈቱ አየሁ፡፡ 'ይመርመር' የሚል አፍ ግን አንድ ብቻ ሰማሁ፡፡"
This means,
“Now among you there is no one who knows about this tree. The only knowledge you have is that its shade kills. You don’t know: who planted it? Why has he planted it, for whom he has planted it, what sort of fruit it is, why it kills? I saw mouths opened to say ‘Let it be cut!’ But a mouth that says ‘Let it be investigated!’ I have heard only one.”
What we can understand from this excerpt is that the need to destroy something, a tree in this case, and the demand to self-destroy, the tendency to believe in an idea haphazardly without investigation, the urge to destroy the tree for the mere reason that it killed humans, should have to be accompanied by investigative curiosity rather than close-ended command words and unclear metaphors of annihilation. It needs something more than deciding what to destroy; it must involve the other WH FAQs: why, where, when, how…? Or else an act of submitting oneself to a belief without a clear idea of what it is or participating in destructive sermons, acts that include self-destruction without understanding why it will be inhuman deed, I mean acts that are not qualities of human beings in comparison with the immense curiosity, skills, abilities and exuberance we possess.
Now it is time to get back to our major area of interest, an event that had been created by yea-sayers before thousands of years, that bears the message “The Apocalypse if here and now, on 21 December 2012”, which has its roots in the Mayan Calendars. Many people around the world thought, perceived and believed, the world that we are now living in, had lived in the past and are going to live in the future, would be destroyed, will come to an end, will be annihilated, on this day, 21 December 2012, the point where the hitherto used Mayan Calendar will have its long awaited turning point. They explicitly stated “the End of the World is Coming Soon.” This warning was not without ‘prophets’/nightmarish dreamers and eye folded followers, disciples and apostles. The fact is that many people followed the trend, joined the group, devoted their valuable time, turned life upside-down, lost hope, became entangled in the hypothetical idea that ‘our universe will be destroyed in order to be recreated, full of meek people, people without any kind of ‘sin’; they recited the sentences: “sinful people will be awarded eternal hell, purgatory that persecutes the souls of mankind with eternally burning ablaze flames due to the perversity of human condition and meek people will be granted free access to eternal bliss, happiness, love for their good, disciplined, generous, uninquiring deeds, without preconditions.” In contradiction to the Mayan belief: the universe will have a transitioning into another era of peace, the mainstream writers, the prophets (esp. Nostradamus) and the media, some scientists, many religious leaders were in favor of the ‘warning’, “the world is going to end on 21 December 2012.” But does the mere fact that there is a Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere and a Summer Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere indicate any evidence of the end of the world? Is it something that had never happened before? It had happened many times for eras. Some mocked at the whole idea, for they were pre-informed that it was just a hoax, and the rest were still unaware of its very existence; to those people it was something that will never happen because of the mass culture of approval and ignorance that the majority is engaged or the extent of its popularity by itself. Some others related it to their respective religious revelations, prophesies that “we are living in the end of days, for we have sinned a lot for more than at least 10, 000 years.” Their main line of argument was that the perversity of human behavior is innate than something brought about into the open by the type of conditionings that we undergo, nurture, as individuals and above all as groups.
The proponents of the Apocalyptic World View were mainly actors of such drama of tragedy at least two visible times in the 21st century: (1) in the year Y2K (2000), the 2nd Millennium AD and (2) on this day, 21 December 2012. These are the two hoaxes that the world had undergone at a global scale so far, the delusions it had experienced hitherto. But as the saying goes “bad habits are like a comfortable bed, easy to get into but hard to get out of” once addicted to them profanely. If they are able to have an increasing number of followers, mostly poor, desperate, pessimistic, illogical, fatalistic, superstitious, psychotic, they will continues to play the same subversive role at a wider scope as more than they had been ever before, the there seems the number of adherents to such ‘faiths’ to be showing paradoxes, increasing somewhere and falling in the others; they will continue dividing the people of the world into sectarian groups hostile each other due their beliefs, the chosen ones, the ones ‘to enjoy heaven’ and the outcasts, ‘heretics’ though they are the forces behind the changes of society, the ‘forgotten ones’, those that are to ‘burn eternally in hell’; above all the question as “who is to grant what type of afterlife to whom under what circumstances?” is a still major point of argument for nothing and disagreement across diverse people, cultures, religions, economic classes, political echelons, social classes, idiosyncrasies…
When the eve to 21 December arrived, the proponents told the world that “the ‘ending’ will begin on Thursday, 20 December 2012 afternoon and will be complete by the next day, 21 December 2012.” When this failed to happen they readjusted their reminder to the “day of apocalypse”, “the judgment day”, “the day the world ends”, itself, adding fuel to the fire, they warned: “if it will not in the daytime, it may happen at midnight.” Both didn’t occur, for they were nightmares, hoaxes, just jokes, not ideas based on logical arguments or visible and comprehensible evidences of proof. But they have tried to furnish their “prophetic vision” using “theories” of black holes, the creation of dark, celestial/cosmic vortexes which will swallow up other sides of the universe that may contain planets, like Earth that we live on, borrowed from Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Some inclined to believe them because they had a shallow know-how of cosmic occurrences that are being studied openly in science and philosophy and for they consider occurrences outside their sphere of influence as just miracles. The enlightened ones, the awake ones, didn’t easily fall prey to the trap; it didn’t trick or tempt them. They have calculated the risks of being tempted by such nonsense, absurd ideas. On line of reference regarding the unconscious choice of human beings, the likelihood of discipleship in such absurd demagogues is the one that is given by Osho. He had said, “all over the world, you go on dumping anything that you want to get rid of [hopelessness, desperation, self-pity, apathy, inferiority-complex, destitution, ignorance…] on [the metaphysically existent imaginary creators like] God, on fate, on destiny. They are just different names for non-existential things. Certainly you cannot throw your garbage on somebody who is actually there.” Another idea that furnishes and strengthens the idea, the major reason behind mankind’s tendency to have unconsciously driven choices comes from Thomas Alva Edison: “Thinking is a very hard work. There is nothing a man will not do in order to avoid the labor of thinking.” When we critically observe this statement, what comes to our mind may not be the image of a human being with thinking brain rather an upright ape relying on his primary instincts to make choices, either to prescribe or to proscribe ideas or things, for he is incessantly trying to avoid the labor of thinking about his ways of destruction, though an impossible thing for a man to realize.
An anonymous diplomat had once said, “Words are meant to convey thoughts. If you have trouble in the use of words you are bound to clarify thought which you wish to convey [than shrouding ideas in mystery with the application of value-laden, emotion provoking words].” Of course we have to take care of the words we expel from our mouth, for their results may not be the desired ones, they may prove to be fatal and futile if misunderstood from the very beginning. Above all, the words that we use in our speeches and written articles had the power of creating masters, slaves, superiors, inferiors, visionaries, blind lame, …people of all sorts based on the context in which they are to be understood by our audiences. But I am not proscribing the utility of words, whether value-lade, value-free or not, in any way but in cases like this we have to first consider the psychological and philosophical levels and the degree of the emotional reaction that may probably be ushered, entertained, in the in the first position. If it is to serve the whole race of humanity, it shouldn’t be about teaching people the concept of “the prosaic struggle for existence, destroying the joy of life, and creating apathy”, as of Anton Chekhov. The other thing, that shouldn’t be put on the agenda of the mass-enslavers, the brain washers, a point that should be well understood is the weaknesses of humans to put thumb up in favor of those “demagogues that promise heaven on earth”, while these humans aren’t aware that they are being utilized secretly. If we are to prove that we are powerful, let us challenge those people and situations we consider are stronger than we are. That is the essence of strength, power, and influence; it is not a campaign towards the domination already self-degrading people.
From another angle, what should be given as limelight here is the fact that there is really a special bearing, a message put forward, particularly for and by the people of the Mayan descent. For those people in Central America, especially, in México and Guatemala, 21 December 2012 isn’t about “the end of the world”, “the judgment day”, “the Apocalypse”, or else known by any other name, rather it is about the transformation that is to happen in our universe in favor of positive and optimistic feelings and results. One more thing, refer to http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20712815 . In here what should be emphasized is that many people have imagined that the world will end in this doomsday, for they haven’t found out the implications it had from a Mayan point of view. It means all the hoaxes were mostly driven by ignorance and mere wishes than intuition.
Another thought that I would like to bring to the platform, because of its profound influence on the human race for eons, is the one that was given by Harry M. Johnson in 2007 book “Sociology: A Systematic Introduction”, regarding “Religious Explanations of Evil”:
“There have been three self-consistent religious explanations of the existence of ‘undeserved’ good and bad fortune (Weber, 1946, p.275).of these, dualism, is the most common; indeed, if ‘dualism’ is interpreted broadly, every religion is dualistic. According to this conception, there are supernatural beings or forces which work for ‘good’ and work for ‘evil’. In Christianity itself, despite its proclaimed monotheism, there used to be more emphasis than there is now on the struggle between God and the Devil. Witches, [even atheists, non-Christians, heretics, agnostics…], for example, were supposed to have made a pact with the Devil, like Faust. “
Now compare the mainstream, the most common views with that of Christianity here. Expanding the idea further Johnson goes on:
“The most thoroughgoing, example of dualism, however, is Zoroastrianism, which originated in [Ancient] Persia [, present day Iran]. In the seventh century B.C., this religion had doctrines similar to those of Christinaity; indeed, it influenced Christianity through Judaism and Mithraism.”
In Encyclopedia Britannica, volume 5, pp.49, under the category of “Folklores and Religions” you will find the following paragraph that explains this sense of and belief in dualism in a good:
“Zoroastrians…believe that the history of the world is a vast drama divided into four periods of 3,000 years each. At the end of the first 3,000 years, the creation of the world takes place. At the end of the second, Ahriman arrives to corrupt the creation [, hence the beginning of the concept of dualism]. In the third period, he triumphs but finds himself trapped in creation and doomed to cause his own destruction. In the fourth period, religion comes to earth with the birth of Zoroaster. Each 1,000 years thereafter, a new prophet will appear. The last of these will bring the final judgment and a new world.”
In Christianity, dualism has been explained in this manner, which resembles the Zoroastrian perspective: (1) the creation of the world takes place, completed by the creation of man; (2) the first man, Adam, will be granted eternal life in the Garden of Eden and eventually, another companion was created out of him, the first woman on earth, Eve, who is to play a critical role in the next few years; (3) Adam was given the Law of Agency , the freedom to choose between eternal life and wisdom and was given the right to eat all other fruits, except from the tree of knowledge; a temptation. But by the advice of the Devil, the Serpent in this case, Eve partakes the fruit of the tree of knowledge and after having a munch for herself passes it to Adam; (4) God knows now that he was betrayed, for they have gone against his law, the law that forbids the apple. He expels Adam and Eve out of this earthly paradise. Later on Satan will also be expelled from heaven for corrupting the first human being; (5) similar to the third period in Zoroastrian dualism, Satan, the Devil “finds himself in creation [mankind] and is doomed to cause his own destruction”, for he has made apostles dubbed ‘Anti-Christs’, who are against the Messiah, the Son of God, Jesus Christ. But unlike the Zoroastrian view, here Jesus Christ will not be born the prophets, rather it is his second coming to Earth to enforce the order of his Father, the Father God in Heaven. The major line of difference in between the two lives lies here: in Zoroastrianism the birth of Zoroaster signifies the coming of religion, which literally means submission to “the god of good”, Ahura Mazda and the rule pertaining to the manners of submission and the “judgment day”, the day for punishing creation for ‘masquerading’ with the “good of evil”, Ahriman is to be decided by the coming of the last of the prophets. However, in Christianity, the second coming of Jesus Christ, the Messiah signifies the “judgment day” itself.
Expanding the scope of dualism with examples Johnson suggests:
“Among these doctrines were belief in a divine savior [Jesus Christ] born of a virgin and belief in the end of the world, to be followed by the resurrection of those who had taken the side of Ahura Mazda, who had created everything good, in his great struggle with Aingra Mainyu, or Ahriman, who created everything bad [; this idea of resurrection in the Bible represents those who are to be granted Heaven for their loyalty to Jesus Christ and those who had followed Satan will be rewarded with Hell, for they have played the role of the Anti-Christ]. Ahura Mazda will eventually conquer the world and reward righteous [compare this with the statement in the previous hard braces].”
The second area of considerable importance in the understanding of religious explanations of evil, favored by Johnson is, “the doctrine of Karma, the Hindu ‘law’ of cause and effect and the transmigration of the souls.” Here the point is, the deeds of humans, Dharma, is the cause of the outcomes that are expected out of Karma, either good or evil i.e. if your deeds are good they will transmigrate into being higher level of enlightenment but if the opposite, the person’s soul may even transform into a lizard, for instance.
The third most important explanation Johnson gave was “the belief in predestination, which has varying degrees of prominence in religion.” It is crucial to understand the outcomes of the beliefs and attitudes of religious people towards predestination, for those who believe in being predestined to go to hell will be supportive evidence of their belief in apocalypse.
Generally stating, one of the major reasons why people inclined to believe in the doomsday, the apocalypse, the judgment day, the end of the world…etc was the general tendency and attitudes that people had towards evil, has been stated clearly in the triad explanation of Johnson. If a person believes he had betrayed the “god of good” Jesus Christ, Ahura Mazda, Allah, Waka…, if he believes that he was predestined to go to hell, and if he thinks that what he had been doing in his past life were contrary to the “golden rules of the ‘god of good’”, then the degree to which this person is inclined to believe in the Apocalyptic World View is certain and is mainly guided by roughly constructed analogies, ignorance, meekness, innocence, fear, his personal gloomy prognostications of the future and other unexplained vices. In a dire state, what matters to this person is not whether there really is Apocalypse or not, why is it going to happen? It is just only about when it is going to happen. Given such a date ‘shrouded in mystery’ and obscurity, he cannot help himself, cannot think clear, won’t believe in the good things in life, thinks life he had lived in the past was meaningless, limits his scope and depth of understanding till it flattens out to show its shallowness, he is desperate, he will be a hypochondriac, an insane, self-torturing with the images that he had made himself, lost love, his self-limiting defeatism; his failure to notice and examine what is behind the horizon; he belittles himself to the point of considering himself to be a creature created only to be destroyed, helplessly; his belief in fate and destiny will torment his brain because of his repetitively boring thought that he was fated and destined to die…; at last he is to be a man divided against himself, in plight from his illusions and pains and a homeless and brainless refugee.
Referring to one of the reason behind the gloomy prognostications of the future, present-mindedness, L. S. Stavrianos wrote in his 1976 book, “The Promise of the Coming Dark Age”:
“Present-mindedness appears to be responsible both for [today’s] failure to anticipate such major divergences of the past few decades and for the gloomy prognostications for the forthcoming decades. If one is living in an uncomfortable period of transition and in a country that militantly oppresses movements and regimes favoring a speed-up of the transition process, present-mindedness will project the anxieties and forebodings of the future- a future that consequently will be faced with apprehension rather than welcomed with anticipation.”
Warning against the ill-effects and prospects of such a state of extreme present-mindedness Stavrianos added, “…if present-mindedness is not cast aside in favor of a more dynamic analysis of the contemporary world, the prospect emerges of a new Dark Age that, like the medieval original, will witness deterioration and demolition, but that will also generate amidst the wreckage new values and new institutions heralding a new epoch in human history [if they are to be harnessed wisely].”
At last what I would like to say as conclusion is that such gloomy, pessimistic prognostications of the forthcoming age, the future, depends mainly on our gloomy attitudes. That is why Osho has once said “there is no future if you don’t create it! And whatsoever is going to be tomorrow [doomsday, in this case] is going to be your creation. And it has to be done today, now- because out of today, today’s womb tomorrow will be born” though the color of tomorrow’s world that we create today varies from time to time, person to person, society to society and place to place. But let us strive for the better, brighter tomorrow. Let us not torment ourselves with our illusions, fabricated myths of annihilation, doomsday…whatever. Hence let us not be ignorant, dilettante, apathetic, people of memory, self-eluding, survivalists…Let us be sensible human beings if we care about tomorrow’s generation.
And Satan in Mark Twain’s “Letters from Earth the Earth, Letter III: Satan’s Letters”, has written, “All sane people, sane or insane, like to have variety in their life. Monotony wearies them [the monotony created by the doomsday prophecy in this case].”
Albert Camus, the French philosopher had portrayed the power of mankind to overcome such desperations:
“The remarkable thing in man is not that he despairs, but that he overcomes or forgets despairs.”
Definitely, despairs for nothing, despairs for an Apocalypse that never happens, should really be overcome and forgotten, once and for all.
THE END!